What is sponsorship? It’s a question being asked more than ever in the wake of the awe-inspiring Red Bull Stratos last week when daredevil Felix Baumgartner broke not only the speed of sound but also the world record for highest-altitude freefall by a human being.
Red Bull have consistently challenged the marketing orthodoxy and have continued to redefine how brands should be engaging with their customers. With 40% of its annual turnover spent on marketing, Red Bull has consistently demonstrated that sponsorship can bring a brand promise (“It gives you wings”) to life as well as any other marketing discipline and that even within the confines of a clearly-defined strategy, a brand can continue to redefine the boundaries of its creativity.
But wait. What’s that I hear you say? Red Bull Stratos is not a sponsorship? Perhaps you are right. I would argue that it actually doesn’t matter and that we need to accept that any traditional definition of sponsorship needs either to be re-evaluated or even ditched entirely or we risk being left behind a world not especially interested in the dogma of definition.
Red Bull have been blurring the lines for a good while. I recall a survey we conducted at Redmandarin way back in 2004 in which we interviewed 300+ European marketing decision makers about sponsorship and one of the questions we asked was who “did” sponsorship well? The overwhelming response was Red Bull. Even then the company had realised that there was no off-the-shelf solution to solve their marketing requirements and so set about creating their own content, all of which tied into their brand promise, none of which would probably be defined as sponsorship in its traditional sense, yet whatever they were doing had won the attention and the plaudits of their peers.
Red Bull are to be applauded for their continuing ability to surprise even their closest observers and the lesson for us all is that we need to think in far less linear terms. I have to be honest, I hate Red Bull as a product but as a marketer I can only doff my cap to a brand which in my view knows its customers, and what its customers expect from a brand better than any other.
Whether or not Red Bull Stratos is a sponsorship or not is unimportant. What is clear is that we in the sponsorship industry need to think about what Red Bull’s approach to marketing and its customers can teach us. I’ve written here before that the days of cash-for-rights deals between rightsholders and brands are dying. Red Bull have proved that creation is a very clear way forward and that brands and agencies should not be worried about barriers to success. Conversely rightsholders should be awake to the fact that selling one-dimensional off-the-shelf packages really just doesn’t stack up any more as brands will be increasingly emboldened that they can derive value from proprietary platforms.
More generally, Red Bull should be inspiring us all to challenge the way we think.
Follow Ben on Twitter @ben_wells1
